1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink set and to an inkjet recording method and recorded matter using the ink set, and particularly relates to an ink set featuring excellent granularity and to an inkjet recording method and recorded matter that use this ink set.
2. Related Art
An inkjet recording method is a printing method which causes droplets of an ink composition to fly and adhere to a recording medium, such as paper or the like, to perform printing. Such a method features the characteristics of being capable of printing high-resolution, high-quality images at high speeds with a comparatively inexpensive apparatus.
In recent years, for such inkjet recording methods, ink sets formed of pluralities of color ink compositions have been constituted and the formation of color images has been performed therewith. Commonly, formation of color images is performed using: an ink set including three colors—a yellow ink composition, a magenta ink composition and a cyan ink composition; an ink set including four colors, with a black ink composition in addition to the above-mentioned colors; an ink set including colors other than those four colors, as secondary colors; an ink set including ink compositions (dark and light inks) which, while matching in color, have a variety of chromatic categories varying in shade (colorant density); or the like.
For example, as an ink set including colors other than the above-mentioned four colors as secondary colors, an aqueous pigment ink set for inkjets which features high color reproduction, color saturation and glossiness has been proposed (JP-A-2001-354886). This ink set is provided with a yellow ink composition, a magenta ink composition, a cyan ink composition and a black ink composition, and, in addition to those four colors, a green ink composition and a red ink composition.
As an ink set which includes dark and light ink compositions, an ink set has been proposed (JP-A-2003-238857) which is provided with two black ink compositions with different pigment densities and which improves color reproduction without adversely affecting granularity of low brightness portions.
However, with previous ink sets, a tendency for granularity of the recording images that are printed to be degraded has been apparent. Accordingly, various means for improving granularity have been tried, but the fact is that as yet images of sufficient quality have not been obtained.